The Forgotten App

The night was unusually quiet as Maya scrolled through her phone in bed, the dim light of the screen casting shadows on her bedroom walls. She had spent the evening deleting unused apps to free up space. Her phone’s storage was nearly full, cluttered with forgotten games, productivity tools she never used, and a myriad of random downloads.

Among the list of apps was one she didn’t recognize: Eidolon. The icon was a simple black square with a faint white outline of a face. Confused, Maya tapped on it, but nothing happened. She tried again, this time holding her finger down to delete it, but the option didn’t appear.

“Weird,” she muttered. Maybe it was some pre-installed app she had overlooked. Deciding to investigate later, she locked her phone and placed it on her nightstand.

That night, she dreamt of whispers. Muffled voices surrounded her, too faint to comprehend, but insistent. She tossed and turned, feeling as though someone was in the room with her, watching. When she finally woke up, her heart was pounding, and her room was deathly quiet.

The next day, Maya’s curiosity got the better of her. She searched for Eidolon on the app store but found no results. A web search turned up nothing either. Frustrated, she opened the app again, and this time, it launched.

The screen displayed a loading animation: a spinning circle of faint, ghostly faces. Then, a message appeared:

Welcome back, Maya.

Her stomach tightened. “Back?” she whispered. She didn’t remember ever using this app.

The screen changed to display a list of names, each accompanied by a timestamp. The most recent entry read:

Maya Patel – 3:12 AM

Her blood ran cold. That was the exact time she had woken up from her nightmare. She scrolled through the list, recognizing none of the other names. At the bottom, a button blinked: Reconnect.

Despite every instinct screaming at her to stop, she tapped it. The screen flickered, and a new message appeared:

Connection established. Prepare for retrieval.

Maya dropped her phone as the lights in her room dimmed, flickering briefly before returning to normal. She stared at the device, its screen now dark. Tentatively, she picked it up, but the app had vanished. Her home screen was back to normal, as if Eidolon had never existed.

Over the next few days, strange things began to happen. Maya’s phone would vibrate with no notifications. Calls would drop with a burst of static, and sometimes, she’d hear faint voices on the other end, whispering her name. The air in her apartment felt heavier, shadows lingering longer than they should.

One evening, while scrolling through her gallery, she found a new folder labeled Eidolon. Inside were photos of her—dozens of them. They weren’t selfies or pictures she remembered taking. In each image, she looked confused, scared, or asleep. The most recent one showed her lying in bed, taken from the corner of the room.

Maya’s breath hitched as she dropped the phone. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen and searched her apartment, checking every closet, under the bed, behind the curtains. Nothing. She was alone. But the feeling of being watched never left.

Desperate, she reached out to her tech-savvy friend, Liam. When she showed him the photos, his face paled.

“Maya, these are timestamps,” he said, pointing to the metadata. “And they’re accurate. Whoever took these… it happened exactly when the photos say it did.”

“That’s not possible,” Maya whispered. “I’ve been alone.”

Liam frowned. “It could be malware, some kind of spyware app. Let me take a look.”

He connected her phone to his laptop, running a series of diagnostics. As he worked, the lights in the room flickered. His laptop screen glitched, displaying lines of distorted text. Suddenly, the word Eidolon appeared, filling the screen.

“What the hell?” Liam muttered, furiously typing to regain control.

The laptop powered off with a loud beep. When it rebooted, everything on it was gone. All files, programs, even the operating system had been wiped.

“Maya, you need to get rid of that phone,” Liam said, his voice trembling.

Ignoring Liam’s advice, Maya kept the phone. She didn’t know why; it felt like the device was tethered to her somehow. Every time she thought about throwing it away, a wave of dread washed over her, as if something terrible would happen if she let it go.

That night, she dreamt again. This time, she was in her apartment, but everything was wrong. The walls were blackened, and the furniture was decayed. In the center of the room stood a figure, its face obscured by a shifting blur. It raised a hand, pointing at her.

“Return what was taken,” it said in a hollow voice.

She woke up screaming, clutching her phone. The screen was on, displaying a new message from Eidolon:

Your time is running out. Reconnect to restore balance.

Terrified, Maya sought help from an occult expert, an older woman named Esther who ran a small metaphysical shop. After hearing Maya’s story, Esther’s expression darkened.

“Eidolon isn’t just an app,” she said. “It’s a conduit. A bridge between realms. Something has latched onto you through it.”

“How do I get rid of it?” Maya asked, her voice shaking.

Esther handed her a bundle of sage and a small vial of black salt. “Cleanse your space. And whatever you do, don’t engage with it anymore. If it asks you to reconnect, refuse.”

Maya followed Esther’s instructions, filling her apartment with the pungent smoke of burning sage and sprinkling the salt along the windowsills and doorways. For a few hours, the air felt lighter, the oppressive atmosphere lifting. But as night fell, the whispers returned, louder and more insistent.

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand. With trembling hands, she picked it up. The screen displayed a countdown:

00:10:00

The timer ticked down, second by second. Panicking, Maya tried to power off the phone, but it wouldn’t respond. She even attempted to smash it, but the screen remained intact, unblemished.

As the timer hit zero, the phone screen turned white, flooding the room with blinding light. When the light faded, Maya found herself standing in a vast, empty void. Shadows swirled around her, and in the distance, she saw the figure from her dream.

“You took what was not yours,” it said, its voice echoing in the emptiness. “Now you must pay the price.”

“I don’t understand!” Maya cried. “What did I take?”

The figure stepped closer, and she saw its face for the first time: it was her own, twisted and hollow, eyes burning with pale fire.

“Your soul,” it whispered. “Piece by piece, it has been feeding on you. Now, there is nothing left.”

Maya’s screams echoed in the void as the shadows consumed her. Back in her apartment, her phone lay on the bed, its screen displaying a single message:

New user connected. Welcome to Eidolon.